L Streets neighbor Kerry Paradise of Baller Mom Kitchen knows what it takes to feed a family night-in and night-out.
A mom herself, she was responsible for putting food on the table for her three sons, who are 6-foot-8, 6-foot-6 and 6 feet tall, respectively. Her background is primarily in hospitality, having worked for companies like Brinker International and TGI Friday’s.
Photography by Victoria Gomez
Photography by Victoria Gomez
Photography by Victoria Gomez
Photography by Victoria Gomez
Photography by Victoria Gomez
She’s always enjoyed being in the kitchen and grew up in a house where home-cooked meals made with fresh ingredients were the norm. In her childhood home in East Dallas near Casa Linda, Paradise’s family pantry was constantly stocked with vegetables from the produce cooperative her mother was a member of.
“They would have whatever those people decided to buy that week. That’s what was in (their delivery),” she says. “And it might be as obscure as sugar cane or as nasty as Brussels sprouts. I love them now. At my house, you ate what was on your plate. If it was good for you, it was going to go in your body, and it was not going to go in the trash.”
Even after her career took her away from chain restaurant operations and into real estate, Paradise still had to make dinner for her family at the end of the day. But while she ferried her kids to basketball practices, games and tournaments, a trip to McDonald’s was oftentimes the path of least resistance.
“They all played sports. We were always on the go,” Paradise says. “Still, I was the mom to where I was trying to serve (dinner). So I’m trying to juggle work and all of the sports and extracurriculars and feeding the crew. I love to cook, and I had great intention, but even for us, too many times, we were going through drive-thrus, and I didn’t love that.”
There were plenty of drive-thru trips, but she still prioritized home-cooked meals and experimenting in the kitchen as her boys grew up.
“I have no formal culinary background at all. I was a mom. I was a really good cook. People would always say, ‘You should open your own restaurant.’ And I would be like, ‘I will absolutely never do that.’”
She kept her word on that — kind of.
In 2020, Paradise launched Baller Mom Kitchen from her home. While it may not be a full-service restaurant, the business churns out hundreds of pre-made meals every week for neighbors who need to put food on the table but may not always have enough time to cook a hearty meal for four.
“I do believe that there’s real value in sitting around the kitchen table as a family and having dinner,” she says. “And that was something that we were missing the mark on in our household. And I knew so many of my mom friends were feeling the same, so I built this for us with that experience in mind.”
Her original team consisted of local moms working out of her home. The pandemic, however, forced the business to adapt its staffing model.
“We were scrambling to find gloves, and we were scrambling to find packaging because all of a sudden, every restaurant wanted the same packaging we’d been buying,” she says. “But there was available talent because restaurants were laying off people. I’d lost my mom workforce because they had to stay home with their kids. And so it was very much a huge shift for us in how we did things.”
Another shift came after a surge in popularity forced her to abandon her home oven and move into the larger kitchen at Highland Oaks Church of Christ. She and her team of about 10 employees now work out of the commercial kitchen at Cochran Chapel United Methodist Church off of Northwest Highway and Midway Road.
She gives the credit for much of its rapid expansion to her fellow moms in Lake Highlands, where she does about half of her business, she says.
“The turning point was a Lake Highlands mom named Melissa Moore. I didn’t know her at the time, but she had ordered salads from us and loved them. And I think she posted in the LH Mama’s page, or somewhere on the Lake Highlands moms network, about this new thing she had found,” she says. “And we jumped by, I don’t even know what percent. I think we went from like 120 people following us on Facebook to 500 in a weekend, and then it was just up from there.”
BMK’s menu changes weekly and draws from its lineup of over 150 rotating dishes. Menu items include baked casseroles, keto bowls, salads, pastas and Tex-Mex-derived staples like chicken quesadillas. Some of the most popular items, like chicken spaghetti, country salad and a Tex-Mex bowl, have remained constants since the business’s early days, she says.
Most of her business comes from local families with busy schedules and hungry children. However, she also sells to early career professionals, empty nesters and elderly neighbors.
“It makes me so incredibly happy,” Paradise says. “Most of our customers are families, but there’s a widower who’s in his late 60s, and his wife died, and they always hosted Sunday dinner for their daughters and their grandkids, and he didn’t cook. Now he orders casseroles and salads from us, and he can still host family dinner on Sundays.”
As it has grown, BMK has expanded into catering, large corporate orders and wholesaling to Dallas restaurants. East Dallas Middle Ground serves BMK breakfast burritos, egg bites and sandwiches, and locally-acclaimed burger joint Burger Schmurger has a special called the “Sweet Heat” that comes with BMK pimento cheese sauce.
Paradise’s business also engages in charitable endeavors. It served over 3,000 free meals during COVID and has partnered with the Office of Homeless Solutions to feed unhoused individuals staying in inclement weather shelters.
“The amazing thing is, about Lake Highlands and our community at large, the people that subscribe to our newsletter and follow us, when OHS reaches out and says, ‘We need help. Can you?’ And I say, ‘Yes.’ And they say, ‘How much?’ I say, ‘Give me a minute, and let me see what I can cover,’” she says. “And then I put out the word and tell people, ‘Here’s what we need and here’s what we’re looking for.’ And then, my Venmo goes off, and we have it covered, and I can tell the city, ‘We don’t have to charge you anything.’”
Paradise would like to expand her corporate catering business and continue supporting local restaurants in the short term. While she hasn’t ruled out food blogging on a beach in Mexico further down the road, she says Baller Mom Kitchen will continue to grow for the foreseeable future.
In the meantime, she has some advice for moms as the school year gets underway.
“For back-to-school, plan ahead and utilize us for two meals a week,” Paradise says. “Plan ahead for the rest. Make your life a little bit easier. Don’t forget your teachers. Order lunch for your teachers, or order a casserole for your teachers to take home that first week because their life is really hard.”
